What to do in October

October is likely to be your last chance to get any real work done in the garden before the weather takes the decision out of your hands. It should still be reasonably warm unless we get hit with a really early winter, so get the gardening gloves out and get the last minute pre-winter jobs done.

Some plants don’t survive cold days and even colder nights, so if you have any delicate house plants outside that have been getting the benefit of late summer sunshine, bring them indoors now and avoid a surprise frost ruining them.

 

If you have a greenhouse, delicate plants will be fine in there, if not, take them indoors or get them under shelter if possible. You might want to acclimatise them slowly; if it’s warm you can leave half-hardy perennials until the end of October, but in frost-prone areas it’s best to bring them under cover, or into the shelter of the building, early in the month.

Give the perennials their last cut of the year; trim everything back ready for spring. Prune plants like climbing roses right back and get shrubs looking neat and tidy.

Give the lawn its last cut before winter, and tidy up leaves and foliage that have built up in early autumn. Raking the leaves up prevents them from browning the grass, as well as generally making the garden look tidy! You can save some of the leaves for mulch if you like, which you can put over borders to help keep soil from getting too cold. As a finishing touch, you could also give your lawns a feed; this can help to to stimulate root growth and is well worth it for on lawns that get a lot of wear over the spring and summer.

Keep clearing the leaves up all through the winter so that you keep the lawn looking healthy. Just add them to your mulch collection and they’ll serve a useful purpose instead of cluttering up the garden.

Get planting done ready for next year; anything that you plant at this time of year will hopefully benefit from time over the winter to take root. Evergreens can dry out if you plant them in exposed areas over the winter though, but if you’re happy to carry on watering them even when it’s cold outside, it’s also worth planting those.